Reset your passwords — hackers strike Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Inc. told users to reset their passwords after it detected a hacking attempt to gain Yahoo Mail usernames and passwords.

The Sunnyvale-based company said in a blog post that the information was probably accessed from a third-party database. Yahoo said it hasn't found any evidence hackers stole data from the company's computer network, and it isn't clear how many accounts may have been affected.

The attack puts Yahoo in the company of Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google Inc., LinkedIn Inc. and others, which were found to have had 2 million passwords stolen in December. In October, Adobe Systems Inc. reported that 38 million user passwords had been hacked and posted on the Web.

“Security attacks are unfortunately becoming a more regular occurrence,” Jay Rossiter, Yahoo’s senior vice president for platforms and personalization products, wrote in the blog. “We regret this has happened and want to assure our users that we take the security of their data very seriously.”

The issue so far hasn’t crimped social networks or other businesses that have been hacked.

Companies have responded by urging consumers to use stronger passwords, though that doesn’t protect users from hacks that come through the company’s own back doors. Their efforts to combat those attacks have boosted the share prices of companies like FireEye Inc., bringing some to consider 2014 the year of the computer security company.

Yahoo and federal law enforcement agencies are working together to find the peopleresponsible for the breach, Bloomberg reported.

Yahoo Mail, which has more than 100 million daily users, experienced a bumpy ride over the past year. There were "compounding issues" in December that CEO Marissa Mayer apologized for, including lost messages, problems accessing other email programs and users being shut out.